Actor Leonard Nimoy — Mr. Spock to his legions of Star Trek fans — has died at age 83 from a destructive lung disease called COPD, telling his fans in a poignant tweet last month: “Don’t smoke. I did. Wish I never had.”

His wife confirmed his death to the New York Times, saying the cause was end-stage COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

COPD is one of the most common lung diseases and the third leading cause of death in the U.S., causing nearly 135,000 deaths a year. There is no cure. COPD causes inflammation and damage to the lung tissue, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Symptoms include a chronic cough, shortness of breath and frequent respiratory infections.

Smoking is the most common cause of COPD, but quitting smoking slows the disease’s progress, lung experts say. Nimoy had been a smoker but had quit 30 years ago. So how could smoking still play a role in his death?

“That’s the most common question patients ask me — ‘I’ve quit smoking; how could I have COPD?’ ” says Ravi Kalhan, M.D., director of the asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Unfortunately, he says, there’s no way to undo damage to lung tissue that occurred when a person was smoking. “We can control it with medication, like you would diabetes or high blood pressure, but we can’t cure it.”

Still, quitting smoking is a critical step. “The best thing [Nimoy] did was to quit, because it prolonged his life,” says Albert Rizzo, M.D., senior medical adviser to the American Lung Association. As patients get older, however, they often find it harder for their damaged lungs to fight off respiratory infections, he adds.

Nimoy, famous as the half-Vulcan, half-human first officer on the Starship Enterprise, had announced last year that he was battling COPD and urged his friends and fans to stop smoking. “I quit smoking 30 yrs ago. Not soon enough. I have COPD. Grandpa says, quit now!! LLAP,” he tweeted. (“LLAP” stands for his oft-repeated Vulcan salutation, “Live long and prosper.”)

A little-known actor before he was cast as the pointy-eared, ceaselessly logical sidekick to William Shatner’s Captain Kirk in the Star Trek television series, Nimoy went on to have an eclectic career as a movie actor and director, writer, poet and singer. In his 40s, he even earned a master’s degree in Spanish, the Times reported.

In tribute to the actor, Shatner wrote on Facebook, “I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love.” And fellow actor George Takei, who played Sulu on the series, tweeted: “Today, the world lost a great man, and I lost a great friend. We return you now to the stars, Leonard. You taught us to ‘Live Long And Prosper,’ and you indeed did, friend. I shall miss you in so many, many ways.”

Even President Obama tweeted, “I loved Spock,” adding in a press release, “Long before nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy.”

Obama said he met the actor in 2007, greeting him, of course, with, “Live long and prosper.” The president added, “And after 83 years on this planet — and on his visits to so many others — it’s clear Leonard Nimoy did just that.”

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/27/a-sad-lesson-about-copd-from-leonard-nimoy/feed/0Why Women Should Check a Man’s Finger Sizehttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/27/why-women-should-check-a-mans-finger-size/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/27/why-women-should-check-a-mans-finger-size/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 15:43:36 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=117273OK, we know you’re smirking. This is not about how a man’s finger size is related to the size of his junk. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that — in fact, one study says it’s true.)

No, there’s another reason women might want to check the length of a man’s ring finger: It may be an indication of how nice he’ll be toward the opposite sex.

A new Canadian study says it has to do with the size ratio of a man’s index and ring fingers, determined by dividing the index finger’s length by the ring finger’s. Basically, the shorter a man’s index finger is compared with his ring finger, the more likely he is to be nice to women. Guys whose index and ring fingers are close in length or who have short ring fingers — yeah, you might want to avoid them. They’re more likely to be an argumentative pain.

Evidently it has to do with the hormones — chiefly testosterone — these men were exposed to in their mother’s wombs, according to the McGill University study, which was published in the March issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The smaller the ratio, the more male hormones.

Previous studies have found an association between finger-length ratio and male hormonal level, too.

In the McGill study, lead author Debbie Moskowitz, a professor of psychology, said men with smaller ratios were more likely to “listen attentively, smile and laugh,” and “compromise or compliment” a woman. Additionally, they were less quarrelsome with women than with men. Men with larger ratios were equally quarrelsome with both, she said in a statement. These results might also explain why these nicer men tend to have more children — “they have more harmonious relationships with women.”

The findings are based on 155 participants, both men and women. Researchers measured their fingers and the participants then reported every social interaction they had lasting more than five minutes over the next 20 days. Based on these reports, researchers classified the behaviors as either agreeable or quarrelsome. Men with a lower ratio between the finger lengths had about a third more agreeable interactions with women and a third fewer quarrelsome ones.

Interestingly, it didn’t matter whether the woman was a friend, work colleague or romantic partner — the finger-ratio rule held. For women, however, finger size provided no prediction of behavior.

While this study showed men with longer ring fingers getting along better with women, research last month from Oxford University suggests those men may get along a little too well with women: In that study, men, and to some extent women, with elongated fourth fingers were more likely to be promiscuous.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/27/why-women-should-check-a-mans-finger-size/feed/0Hot Flashes Can Linger for How Many Years??http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/17/hot-flashes-can-linger-for-how-many-years/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/17/hot-flashes-can-linger-for-how-many-years/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 16:58:45 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=115921Up to 80 percent of menopausal women suffer hot flashes, but doctors have typically reassured women that these embarrassing, uncomfortable bursts of heat and sweat won’t last long. You know, maybe six months. Two years, tops.

Ha-ha. Try up to 14 years.

A new study — one of the first to look at a large, multiracial group of women — found that hot flashes typically last for seven years or more and that some women have reported suffering with them for up to 14 years. Even worse, if the hot flashes start early, say while a woman is in perimenopause when menstruation becomes infrequent, the hot flashes can last even longer.

The research, published Feb. 16 in JAMAInternal Medicine, also found that African American women tended to have hot flashes the longest — typically 10 years — followed by Hispanic women at nearly nine years. Asian women had them for the shortest time.

The findings were based on 1,449 women from seven U.S. cities, followed from 1996 to 2013. All of the women had frequent hot flashes and night sweats, meaning for at least six days in the previous two weeks, and none had had a hysterectomy or was on hormone therapy. The study also found that having frequent symptoms was associated with more anxiety, depression, sleep problems, heart disease risk and poorer bone health.

The study was praised by experts, the New York Times reported, because it included a much larger, more diverse group of women than previous studies. “It’s such a real-world study of women we are seeing day in and day out,” Risa Kagan, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told the Times. “There is no other study like this.”

And it’s about time, noted the authors of an accompanying commentary, considering that 60 percent of middle-aged women seek treatment or advice for these symptoms that can disrupt work, home life and health.

“Despite the high prevalence of [hot flashes] among midlife women, surprisingly little research has been done,” wrote authors Gloria Richard-Davis, M.D., of the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences in Little Rock, and JoAnn E. Manson, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The new study “has overturned the dogma that [hot flashes] have a short duration, minimally affect women’s health or quality of life, and can be readily addressed by short-term approaches,” they wrote. Doctors now need to understand that these symptoms can last much longer and may need a variety of approaches to help women find relief.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/17/hot-flashes-can-linger-for-how-many-years/feed/0New Guidelines May Say Yes to Eggs but No to Baconhttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/16/new-guidelines-may-say-yes-to-eggs-but-no-to-bacon/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/16/new-guidelines-may-say-yes-to-eggs-but-no-to-bacon/#commentsMon, 16 Feb 2015 12:00:16 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=115685The government’s new dietary guidelines, due to be released in the coming months, may contain an about-face on decades of advice not to eat cholesterol-rich food.

As the Washington Post put it, the move by the nation’s top nutrition advisory panel “could undo almost 40 years of government warnings” about eating foods high in cholesterol, like eggs and shellfish.

A preliminary report by the panel, released in December, stated for the first time that “cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for over-consumption” — meaning, you don’t have to worry about cholesterol in your food.

This represents a sea change in thinking among health experts who have admonished Americans for decades that overeating foods rich in cholesterol would cause the cholesterol in their bloodstream to increase, leading to heart disease.

But while eggs, shrimp and lobster may be off the no-no list, foods high in saturated fat like butter, cream and fatty meats (sorry, bacon) may not be so lucky. The panel still thinks saturated fat should be restricted, noting that overconsumption “may pose the greatest risk to those over 50 years old.” Saturated fat — a type of fat that’s solid at room temperature — is thought to raise the level of “bad,” or LDL, cholesterol in the bloodstream.

So why the shift away from warnings about cholesterol in food? Criticism of the assumption that cholesterol in the diet results in cholesterol buildup in our arteries has been going on for years, but recent research may finally have gotten more attention.

“There have been multiple analyses and meta-analyses now looking at intake of dietary cholesterol and the risk of heart disease,” Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., dean of the school of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University, told Time.com. “In the general population, there’s really not any strong evidence for a link.”

Other experts agree it was time for nutrition policy to catch up to research. Steven Nissen, M.D., chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, told USA Today, “It’s the right decision. We got the dietary guidelines wrong.”

As for why it took so long, Gary Taubes, author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” a history of the science behind the low-fat diet craze, thinks health authorities have harped on cutting cholesterol in the diet all these years because they wanted to stick with a simpler consumer message than the research indicated.

“Some of the most reliable facts about the diet-heart hypothesis have been consistently ignored by public health authorities because they complicated the message, while the least reliable findings were adopted because they didn’t,” he wrote in an email. It’s easier to tell people to “avoid egg yolks” instead of telling them “they should worry about cholesterol in their blood, but not in their diet.”

Keep in mind that the proposed recommendations are talking about an egg or so a day being OK for healthy people. If you already have heart disease or elevated cholesterol, talk to your health care provider.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/16/new-guidelines-may-say-yes-to-eggs-but-no-to-bacon/feed/0The Jolie Effect: A Jump in Breast Cancer Gene Testinghttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/11/the-jolie-effect-a-jump-in-breast-cancer-gene-testing/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/11/the-jolie-effect-a-jump-in-breast-cancer-gene-testing/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 12:00:55 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=115304Just how big of an effect did movie star Angelina Jolie have on women getting tested for the BRCA breast cancer gene? A hefty 40 percent jump, according to the first study to look at the impact of Jolie’s announcement that she had undergone testing.

The study by the AARP Public Policy Institute analyzed more than 6.5 million health insurance claims for women 35 and older during 2013. Researchers found that testing rates increased from about 350 a week prior to Jolie’s news to about 500 a week after she announced in May of that year that she carried the inherited BRCA-gene mutation and had undergone an elective double mastectomy as a result.

BRCA testing rates remained elevated for the rest of 2013, said Debra Whitman, AARP executive vice president of policy, strategy and international affairs.

Before Jolie’s op-ed column in the New York Times, in which she explained her family history of breast and ovarian cancer, most women who got the BRCA- gene test had already been diagnosed with cancer. But after Jolie’s editorial appeared, the increase in BRCA testing among women without a cancer diagnosis was nearly twice that of women with a diagnosis, the AARP study found.

The study also showed that women ages 50 to 64 had the highest BRCA testing rate increase, at 44 percent, followed by women ages 35 to 49, at 40 percent. Among racial and ethnic groups, BRCA testing increased 43 percent among both white and Hispanic women, 23 percent among African American women and 16 percent among Asian women.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are inherited gene mutations and the most common cause of hereditary breast cancer. Women with either mutation — about 1 percent of the general population — have a higher lifetime risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Jolie’s mother died of ovarian cancer at age 57 in 2007, and Jolie’s aunt, who carried the gene, died at 61 in 2013 from breast cancer.

To view entire infographic in new window, click on image above.

The surge in BRCA testing, thanks to the actress, doesn’t surprise breast cancer expert Julie Gralow, M.D. — but she doesn’t think this happened just because Jolie is so famous.

The actress “did a good job” explaining the gene mutation and the risks it can bring, said Gralow, a clinical researcher with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle: “She was accurate medically, no one could argue with the data she presented, and she clearly explained her thought processes in coming to her decision.”

For many women, reading about Jolie’s decision also helped them better understand the risks of a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Gralow remembers a discussion with one BRCA-positive woman who, when told that one of her options was a prophylactic mastectomy such as Jolie had, “suddenly perked up and said, ‘Oh, I get it now.’ It made it much easier for her to think about and comprehend.”

Overall, Gralow added, the boost in awareness about BRCA-gene testing “is a good thing. The more we know about our own health risks, the better.”

But Gralow cautions that testing needs to go hand in hand with getting “good medical genetics counseling.” Women “need a lot of support in discussing what their options are and what the test results mean for a family, both positive and negative.”

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/11/the-jolie-effect-a-jump-in-breast-cancer-gene-testing/feed/0‘Light’ Jogging Better Than Running? Well, Maybehttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/09/light-jogging-better-than-running-well-maybe/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/09/light-jogging-better-than-running-well-maybe/#commentsMon, 09 Feb 2015 13:00:51 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=114680For a moment last week, research offered all of us slow, plodding exercisers a moment of revenge.

According to a new Danish study, those hard-charging runners who blow by us on the jogging trail — or pound away for a sweaty hour on the treadmill several times a week — are ruining their health as much as sluggish, non-exercising couch potatoes.

In fact, the researchers said, it was really the twice-a-week, sedate joggers who were going to live the longest. Based on the study of about 1,000 joggers ages 20 to 95, and 413 non-exercisers, the death rate of “strenuous joggers” (runners) and non-exercisers was the same during 12 years of follow-up.

“Overall, significantly lower mortality rates were found in those with a slow or moderate jogging pace, while the fast-paced joggers had almost the same mortality risk as the sedentary non-joggers,” researchers said in a statement. Even better, jogging just 1 to 2.4 hours per week was associated with the lowest mortality and there was no need to jog more than three times per week, the authors of the study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said.

An editorial accompanying the study noted that the “strenuous” jogging group included only 40 people, while the other groups (light, moderate and non-joggers) included hundreds — which makes it statistically questionable to claim that there are no real differences between the small group’s death rate and that of the larger group.

Also, the researchers didn’t look at more than 3,500 active non-joggers who exercised in other ways, editorial coauthor Duck-chul Lee of Iowa State University told HealthDay. And they looked only at death from all causes, he said, instead of looking to see if high jogging miles and times affected certain causes of death, such as heart disease.

University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers echoed the same criticism, writing in the New York Timesthat there were only two deaths in the strenuous group and no indication whether the runners really died from overexercising: “Needless to say, these two deaths do not add up to a statistically significant finding. Moreover, the researchers do not even report whether those two deaths were from causes that could plausibly be related to running.” For all we know, they died from a car accident or eating a bad piece of sushi.

Or, as Alex Hutchison of Runner’s World put it, “Thank goodness a third person didn’t die, or public health authorities would be banning jogging.”

Despite these limitations, the Danish study adds to growing evidence that even a light-to-moderate amount of exercise has health benefits. After all, even those in the study who jogged less than an hour a week had a lower death rate than the sedentary folks did.

Considering Americans’ high level of obesity and low level of physical activity, the takeaway still is: Do something physical. Even a little bit. It can help you to live longer.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/09/light-jogging-better-than-running-well-maybe/feed/0How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/03/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/03/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 16:52:05 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=114413Not getting enough sleep has huge effects on our health — from foggy thinking to heart problems to weight gain — but just how much sleep is considered enough?

That’s the question the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) tackled with a panel of scientists who reviewed more than 300 sleep-duration studies and came up with new guidelines, including one for people age 65-plus.

“This is the first time that any professional organization has developed age-specific recommended sleep durations based on a rigorous, systematic review of the world scientific literature relating sleep duration to health, performance and safety,” Charles Czeisler, M.D., chairman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation and chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a statement.

Based on the research, the NSF revised its previous guidelines, making slight changes to the amount of sleep for some ages and adding two new age categories — for young adults, ages 18 to 25, and older adults, 65 and older.

The new recommendations also include more sleep for infants, children and teens:

“Sleep duration was basically one of the most visited pages on the NSF website, and it wasn’t really clear how those recommendations for the ranges had been arrived at,” Max Hirshkowitz, chair of the foundation’s Scientific Advisory Council, told The Huffington Post.

The panel of six sleep experts and 12 medical experts from organizations such as the American Geriatrics Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics reviewed 312 studies of sleep duration in healthy human subjects published between 2004 and 2014.

Because they’re based on the research, the guidelines are for “healthy individuals and those not suffering from a sleep disorder,” the study authors wrote.

While people may sometimes sleep outside the recommended range, “individuals who habitually sleep outside the normal range may be exhibiting signs or symptoms of serious health problems,” or, if done by choice, “may be compromising their health and well-being,” the researchers added.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/03/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need/feed/0Pharmacists Rank Best Over-the-Counter Productshttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/02/pharmacists-rank-best-over-the-counter-products/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/02/02/pharmacists-rank-best-over-the-counter-products/#commentsMon, 02 Feb 2015 13:00:26 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=113273Let’s say you have a cold. Or some nagging heartburn or other minor ailment. Which of the myriad over-the-counter drugs at your drugstore or discount store should you buy for relief?

Let’s ask the pharmacist. In fact, let’s ask more than 12,600 pharmacists. That’s what the American Pharmacists Association does each year for its survey of over-the-counter (OTC) products.

For the 2015 survey, released Feb. 1, pharmacists across the country were asked to report which nonprescription brand-name products they recommended most often to their customers in 89 product categories. The survey then reported the top picks in each category.

Keep in mind, “this is what works for most people, but each individual will have different symptoms,” says Janet Engle, past president of the association and currently head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Meaning, you shouldn’t necessarily pick your drug based on the survey, especially if you have other conditions that might complicate matters. “It’s best to ask the pharmacist if you have any doubts,” Engle says.

The survey covers only brand-name products, not generics. “Overall, you will get good results with both generic and brand,” Engle says, but there can be some minor differences. For example, “Advil has a formulation that’s a little quicker to dissolve, Claritin has a quick-dissolve tablet not available in generic,” and brand and generic liquid medications may taste different, she notes.

Read the label carefully. Take the medicine exactly as directed, learn about side effects, and ask the pharmacist what should be avoided while taking the medication.

Make sure you’re not taking two drugs with the same active ingredient. For instance, taking Tylenol for a headache and NyQuil for cold symptoms can put you at risk for liver failure because you’d be taking a double dose of the same ingredient, acetaminophen. Check the ingredients.

Do not use a kitchen spoon to measure liquid medications — this can lead to over- or underdosing. Use a measuring spoon or a medicine dosing cup to get an accurate dose.

Here are some of the results of this year’s survey, with the percentage of pharmacists recommending each product in parentheses. For all the results, click here or go to pharmacist.com/otc-supplement.

The reason it’s hard for you to tell: Companies are increasing the size of the inner cardboard tubes, so the rolls still look the same to consumers.

And why are hand dryers to blame? Don’t worry — we’ll get to that.

The case of our dwindling toilet paper sheets was explained in an interesting Washington Postcolumn. The old standard size was a 4½-inch square. Now it’s more like a 4-inch square, a reduction of about 26 percent, as a reader of the Los Angeles Times calculated.

Consumer Reports has also noted that our bathroom rolls are being downsized, yet the price has stayed the same. This is important, considering the average American uses 46 sheets of toilet paper a day.

The reason we’re getting less TP for our money has less to do with toilet paper and more to do with paper towels, napkins and maintaining profits, the Post reported.

Paper towel sales have dropped precipitously in the past few years, thanks to folks’ eating out and using the more ecological and hygienic hand dryers in restrooms — even though a recent study found that some dryers may spread more germs by blowing them around. We’re also buying fewer napkins, another possible consequence of more away-from-home meals.

In other words, the paper companies are making less money on other paper products, so they need to increase their profits elsewhere. Namely, toilet paper.

]]>http://blog.aarp.org/2015/01/28/toilet-paper-is-shrinking-blame-hand-dryers/feed/0A Little More Salt Is Not So Bad for Ushttp://blog.aarp.org/2015/01/21/a-little-more-salt-is-not-so-bad-for-us/
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/01/21/a-little-more-salt-is-not-so-bad-for-us/#commentsWed, 21 Jan 2015 17:00:19 +0000http://blog.aarp.org/?p=112499A little more salt may not be such a bad thing for healthy older adults, a new study finds.

Adults age 50-plus have been warned for years not to consume more than 1,500 milligrams (mg) of sodium daily — less than a teaspoon of salt — or they risk all kinds of bad heart-health effects, from high blood pressure to heart failure.

But researchers found that pushing the limit a bit, to 2,300 mg, or about a teaspoon of salt, didn’t increase deaths, heart disease, stroke or heart failure — at least in adults ages 71 to 80.

In fact, among the 2,600 adults followed for 10 years, the death rate was lowest for those who consumed 1,500 to 2,300 mg of sodium a day. The death rate was slightly higher for both those who consumed 1,500 mg or less, and those who consumed more than 2,300 mg a day.

This doesn’t mean we should now eat whatever high-sodium foods we want, warned researchers. The study looked at only a narrow range of modest salt intake. The point was to determine whether the current guideline for sodium consumption — 1,500 mg — was unnecessarily low for older adults without heart disease. There has been very little data on whether this level is really appropriate for that age range, said lead researcher Andreas Kalogeropoulos, M.D., assistant professor of cardiology at Emory University in Atlanta, in an interview with MedicalResearch.com.

Based on the study’s results, there appears to be no link between slightly more salt in the diet and an increased number of deaths, said Kalogeropoulus. One limitation to the study, however, is that participants self-reported the sodium they consumed — meaning their estimates could be off.

Currently, the average American consumes about 3,400 mg of sodium, about twice what the American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend. Most of that sodium is not coming from the saltshaker on the table but from processed and restaurant food, Elliott Antman, M.D., president of the American Heart Association, told HealthDay.

The easiest way consumers can cut back on sodium, he said, is to “read nutrition labels when they shop and ask restaurants to provide the nutrition contents of their meals. They should choose lower-salt products in the supermarket and select lower-salt options on the menu.”